Eleanor Anstruther refuses to judge you—or your inner beast

An intimate dive into Eleanor's momentous, forthcoming novel In Judgment of Others

I discovered Eleanor Anstruther early in my Substack days, and her words struck me like a shard of truth, piercing straight to the core. Her characters—flawed, raw, and deeply human—compel us to confront the cramped, often-overlooked corners of our own psyches. In her forthcoming novel, In Judgement of Others, Eleanor delivers a poignant exploration of mental illness and the societal stigmas surrounding it. The book sheds light on the injustices faced by those with complex diagnoses, revealing the power of compassion and humanity in understanding these struggles.

Eleanor’s writing is grounding—like nourishment, prayer, or solid earth underfoot. It calls us to feel, to listen, and to let the grit of life settle into our bones. In our recent conversation, we explored her process and the fierce drive behind her work: a personal rage against societal inequities. Her writing responds to the harsh labels and misunderstandings surrounding mental health, and In Judgement of Others tackles these themes with unflinching honesty and profound empathy.

Through her protagonist, Tessa—a woman “so covered in the slime of mental illness that every slice of her dripped with it”—Eleanor refuses to romanticize or demonize. Instead, she crafts a narrative that humanizes her characters’ struggles, inviting readers to inhabit Tessa’s pain and see the emotional truths often dismissed by society. This is not a story of cures but of management—a testament to healing as a nonlinear, deeply personal journey. In witnessing these struggles, Eleanor gently offers readers a pathway toward greater self-acceptance.

Her creative process mirrors her themes: an act of deep embodiment and radical openness. Eleanor describes her craft as “making friends with the beast within”—listening to its needs, honoring its motives, and coaxing it toward rest. Her prose quiets discord, unblocks emotional channels, and invites us to embrace our own and each other’s complexities.

I hope you’ll listen to our conversation and take in the wisdom Eleanor shares with such open-hearted integrity. Her words are a balm for anyone navigating trauma, loss, or the difficult work of self-acceptance.

In Judgement of Others will be released January 28, 2025 through Troubadour Publishing.

The Midhurst Amateur Dramatic Society is staging a production of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, and Tessa has agreed to play the part of Elvira. When she suffers a psychotic episode and is sent away for treatment, Ros, a C-list celebrity new to the community, takes her place.

In this darkly comic tale of psychosis in the Home Counties, the stage is set for a blistering examination of mental illness, how we treat it and why we don’t. While Tessa is sectioned in a secure psychiatric hospital, the relationships in the community unravel, and all that we thought we knew, all of our judgements, are thrown into question.

Dim the lights, turn off your phones and settle in as the curtain rises…

TRANSCRIPT

Kimberly

Eleanor, what a pleasure to spend this time with you. I'm thrilled that you're here. For those of my readers that haven't had the privilege of reading Eleanor, you're in for a real treat today. And mostly we're going to be exploring this incredible book that is going to be released January 28th. So...by the time this comes out, that's gonna be just a few weeks away. But we also know Eleanor for her Substack The Literary Obsessive and her incredible serialized novel that's out right now Fallout. I want to talk to her about all of her work, but today we're going to focus on In Judgment of Others, the book that's coming out January 28th.

So without further ado, I want to jump in because there is so much that we want to cover today. And I feel a kind of fluttering in my heart even right now because Eleanor, you have such a raw urgency to your words, to your characters, to your content. And when I read you I feel that urgency and so it's sort of bubbling up right now even as I talk to you and I feel that this book in particular really illuminates some of the urgency of the themes that you discuss which is essentially around mental illness and it really lays bare the torment between mental illness and society's responses to it.

What inspired you to address this very complex topic and some of the different privileges of mental health disorders, diagnoses, and did any real world experiences shape these portrayals?

Eleanor

I mean, I can feel a fluttering as well as I'm sitting here talking to you. Because this book really was born—as most of my work is—it was born out of a rage, really, a raw and a rage around an injustice. I have a very dear friend. It's dedicated to them at the front of the book. When it comes out, everyone will see it's dedicated to my impossible friend. And this friend of mine I've known since we were about 18 years old, probably. And I think they'll be all right in me saying that there's a section in the book where I reference the very first time Tessa's sectioned, which is when she's 21, which happens at her 21st birthday party that she never turns up to because she's been sectioned. And that really did happen. That was the very first sectioning for my friend. We all went to her 21st birthday party. She didn't.

And, you know, she's a remarkable person. She's incredibly funny. She's out there at the far reaches of the universe. And she pays the price for that. And not everyone does who's out there. I'm pretty out there at the far reaches too. So not everyone pays that price, but for various reasons, which obviously I won't go into here because that's her story, hers has become a trauma and a diagnosis of bipolar.

And I think over the 30 years that we've known each other—and she's been in and out of section at least 10 times in that time—I've really witnessed how, I'm going to say society at large, the society around her, treat her illness, condition, her act out, her behavior, and there's so much condemnation attached and so much shame attached.

And it's not without knowing. And in fact, I was speaking to someone the other day at an event who has a sister who's bipolar and she said, “God, I really snapped at her the other day because I was just like, come on, pull yourself together.” And there's, of course there's room for management in all conditions. There's no question about it. There's agency somewhere in all conditions, but to blame somebody for what they have is absolutely not a starting point. But more than that, I have also been in close contact with other kinds of mental health conditions. And I don't really wanna give away what the other one is in the book because I think it'll be too much of a reveal. Though I have talked about it in the past.

But it's my experience that there are other mental health conditions for which you will be made president. Hopefully not twice. Right? And we'll know by the time this comes out what the result is. But the fact is, is that we as a society will, for various reasons, which I'm really happy to go into, we will celebrate some psychotic conditions because, I think it's because our limbic brain must belong and we will belong with the biggest loudest voice in the room. And there are certain conditions which demand a belonging and there are others which are so shameful and shunful that we lock up; and really the book is a cry of rage that we just treat people equally. We treat illnesses equally.

I've made this comparison before actually around the difference between somebody who's diagnosed with cancer and someone who's diagnosed with HIV. And I'm close to many people with both diagnoses. And I've witnessed firsthand both in terms of how legals treat both of those, in terms of what you're able to reach out for the resources that are made available to you. One comes with absolute compassion as it should. And the other one, is deserving of compassion equally comes with a whole lot of blame and shame. So I really wanted to bring that up in terms of mental health. So that's where this novel came from. It was a cry of rage, outrage.

Often my books either come from desire for revenge, which tends to temper by the end and I come up with something else, or just straight up outrage: This is not okay. My friend is a brilliant, impossible person as we all are. It just happens to be that her trauma acts out with the kind of behaviour that we just do not want to look at. And I do think as well, because we put this book out to be, we submitted it to mainstream when I first wrote it, which was five years ago, and we didn't get a buyer. And my agent said, you know, I just wonder if it's just, they don't want to look at a book like this, you know, and I was like, Okay. It was pretty heartbreaking, but I'm so glad Substack has given me the chance to air it.

Kimberly

Yes, and so it's so necessary, Eleanor. I'm reminded of a woman that I worked with on a mental health mini-series who graciously gave us her time while she was in hospice dying of ovarian cancer, but it was a mental health series, so we were more talking about her PTSD diagnosis. And she said when she was diagnosed with PTSD, no one showed up at her door. No one showed up with casseroles. People didn't know what to say. When she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, the house was flooded with love.

Eleanor

You couldn't hold them back, right. And I think, of course, that's wonderful they turn up for the ovarian cancer, but what about the complex PTSD? And I think as well, what I didn't get into in this book, and I've talked to

Sarah Fay

about this in her brilliant book, Pathological, is around the whole diagnoses question, which is a whole other section which I just couldn't get into. But I know for Tessa, I hope what I've outlined and I hope what it becomes plain is that, yes, she's diagnosed with bipolar, but beneath that is trauma. And it is my experience when in close contact with friends and relatives who are diagnosed with these conditions, I've never known someone without one that, and the same with addiction where trauma isn't the bedrock. I haven't seen it. Maybe that exists, but I sure haven't seen it.

Kimberly

Yeah, and I'm so glad that that's addressed. Well, let's get to the trauma in a little bit, but let's, actually want to have you read the last section of chapter one. It's, we're talking about Tessa here. Tessa is this fictional character who's diagnosed with bipolar and it's such a powerful chapter that really reveals what you're talking about with your friend, the impossible nature, that extraordinary aspect of some of these patients that we don't understand because of the way our society is shaped.

Eleanor

Yeah, sure, okay. I will get my glasses on. Okay, so yeah, this is the end of chapter one and Tessa has, we've been through, with her right through a psychotic episode and this is the very last moment of it. And she's standing, she's in her sitting room and people keep appearing and they are her mental health team, her husband's there, her friend's there and her psychiatrist is there.

Everyone was looking at her. Claire on the sofa, Scott in the middle of the room, the two women in blue jackets, Dr. Stemping one step closer. The policewoman. Where was the policewoman? She was sure she'd been there. People were appearing and disappearing and she couldn't make it out. The man in the trilby smiled. Tessa ran for the stairs. One of the women in blue jackets caught her as she reached the first step. The rest was a blur for Tessa, a blur she knew too well. Arms held down, screaming and crying and kicking at Scott and women in blue jackets. A strap too tight, an ambulance too bright. Shouting and light smacked with darkness, a sleep that gave no rest, a knowledge deep inside that she was dying. She struggled and kicked. She cried and pushed away, refused the drugs and shouted at them to let her go. They never gave her enough time. They never let her be. They always interrupted as if they knew. They didn't understand that she could see stars. As the ambulance bumped away from her house, and headed for the main road, Tessa in the back lolled quietly, the silence of trauma bringing changes with the rush of the road beneath her.

Eleanor

Makes me want to cry.

Kimberly

They didn't understand she could see stars. It is such a powerful opening, Eleanor. Anybody that's reading this that has struggled with mental health disorders or a feeling of not even being seen, which we all feel, we resonate with this experience and especially those that have suffered at the hands of society.

I wonder for Tessa when she—so for the listeners, she tears up the house to mirror this chaos that she's been feeling within and that precipitates the authorities coming in. Do you see this as a rejection of the societal expectations or was it a cry for understanding? What precipitated this for Tessa?

Eleanor

Well, I think what comes before is it—or rather maybe that's the chapter slightly later—but she has this obsession with doing up her kitchen. And the society in which she lives and the society in which I've modeled her has this habit of kind of selling the perfect. And she grew up in an environment of selling the perfect at all times. And one of the themes in the book is the inside not matching the outside. And I think when the inside, when your inside world is chaos and you're not able to express it and you have to keep it shut down and as if you're absolutely fine. And I think, you know, I think that's a reason why there's such an emphasis on having the perfect home and the perfect table and the perfect, because it keeps this lie up all the time and I don't really trust anyone whose home is too perfect; I cannot stand it because I know that that means that inside of that person, you know, it's more than a mess. It's a dangerous chaos in there and I feel for them because they're trying to hold this perfect up and so when she rips the house up, it was also slightly, there's another friend I know who suffers psychosis and she always floods the house. And in fact, somebody else I know, it's one of their things, always flood the house. And it's just this kind of inside bursting out to just wash away, clean it. It's a total demolition of the outside lie, really, I think.

Kimberly

Yeah, it’s almost subconscious. The force is so strong. It's not like Tessa said deliberately, “I am going to tear up the house now.” It's a way bigger force.

Eleanor

It's way bigger than her. And with all of these things. I'm sure you know, Gabor Maté, right? He always starts from a place of—everything you're doing is keeping you safe. Whether it's drinking yourself to death or smashing up the house, he starts from that position where what you are doing is keeping yourself safe. And if you start from that position, you can get inside somebody and understand why they're doing what they're doing. So what Tessa is doing by smashing up the house is keeping herself safe. It might not look like that. It might look like whole self destruction, but actually we are fully designed to survive and keep ourselves safe. And that is literally what she's doing. She's just trying to equalize. It's a bit like when you get the bends, you know, it's like she's trying to equalize the inside with the outside, because no one's listening.

Kimberly

Yeah, I was just thinking, the dizziness that I experience, especially when it was in its, you know, the heightened version of itself, I needed my world to be very, very, very small. It was that equilibrium you're talking about where everything needed to be methodical and expected and, you know, to the point where you would have walked into the house and gone, what's wrong with this person? Because the chaos was all inside.

Eleanor

Right. But yeah, that equalization, exactly. I think, you know, I think that's what we're all striving to do all the time. Is just equalize, equalize, equalize, or we kind of find that, but just as nature's trying to do that. And so I think, I mean, that's my starting point with understanding anyone actually, whether they're characters on the page or someone I'm talking to. We're all just trying our best to equalize.

Kimberly

So you actually embody, I'm imagining that you embody your characters because to me they're so visceral and for example when Tessa gets caught up in this episode it is jarring and I want to ask you if you actually took yourself there to write it because it—I'm gonna just read this couple sentences because it just is I mean I get caught up in it just reading it.

Tessa is in the throes of the episode and you write:

She could almost close her eyes and be carried with it. It's a force. Its force was so strong. It lifted her from hall to waterfall of stairs. It moved her gracefully as if swirled and danced no longer in charge had she ever been. Music played incessantly songs of childhood that spoke of how things ought to be. She was beautiful. She was cared for. When she opened her eyes, she'd landed by the fridge. Somebody had smashed up the kitchen. So Tessa went shopping.

I mean, I just love this experience that you took us, a roller coaster. Did you inhabit Tessa to write that? And how do you kind of draw that line between, you know, falling into the stereotypes and the tropes of mental illness and also just, you know, speaking to her experience as it is?

Eleanor

Yeah, I I think every character, I embodied them 100 % that that's the only way I know how to do it. So I absolutely, technically I'd call it “close thirds,” you know, I'm right inside them, 100 % seeing the world through their eyes. And from that position, I just witness what's happening. And I think that's why, I mean, I often get the feeling, when I hear my work read back to me, I don't really remember writing it. I know I did, because my name's on the book, you know what I mean? I don't really, honestly, it's not, the me who's sitting here now talking to you is not the me who does that work, who writes those very early drafts and characterizations and all the rest of it. Because I absolutely have to, I don't even feel like I get inside them. I just turn up at the page.

And I think when you're working on that level, who's inside who becomes kind of moot because it's a whole other something going on now. I can't really describe it. So whether I walk into them or they walk into me or what's happening, I don't really know. I do know that I've had experiences writing books where, in fact, it's almost happening now really, because I'm working on something new, where I'm so engaged with the character that I do change a little bit.

Kimberly

Yeah, you're the Daniel Day Lewis of writers.

Eleanor

I find myself not leaving them on the page. When I wrote my debut, I really took on the main character and she took on me. And it was a bit of a problem really, because I didn't know that had happened. So I started behaving in ways and having certain attitudes that were just absolutely not mine. But now I've learned, but when they first come, it's like a volcano fire coming through. And then they're in me and I'm in them. And I literally just, I just write what I see and hear and feel.

And I think just technically as a writer, you get better at not filtering it. It's definitely for the first draft anyway, just let it happen because they genuinely know better than you. I mean, they genuinely do. And the book knows better as well. So there's two entities which know better than me in the process.

Kimberly

Wow. So you really get out of your own way.

Eleanor

Yeah, I think as I got older and I've been doing it longer and longer, that's really the skill—is getting out of, learning how to do that because everything else will sort itself out. But that takes years of self-discovery and technical know-how to just to do that. Because it's a trust exercise like none other, which is in a way crazy because nobody reads first draft. So who cares if it's gobbledygook?

Kimberly

That's the essence though. I mean, all of that in the first draft, the emotion and the energy that you're putting into it, that's gonna, that remains whether the words change.

Eleanor

Yeah, that's true. That's true actually. There are aspects like that scene actually, the psychosis scene, which used to be the third chapter and I moved it to the first chapter, which that shows, you know, like how I've grown in understanding plotting and stuff. When I wrote it five years ago, and I realized now, of course that doesn't work. So I moved it to the front. But yeah, I think that scene was pretty much as is, as I wrote it first time around because it's so—like you get in that river at the beginning and you just can't stop until you're in the ambulance at the end, and that's what I mean, it is a river that flows through it.

Kimberly

Yeah, absolutely. And you do, I can feel your steadiness within that chaos. You are comfortable with chaos. I really think that works to your advantage as a writer because you really can let yourself go there with your characters then and it feels honest.

Eleanor

Yeah, and I really care about them. I really care. That's the heart of it for me. I really care.

Kimberly

Oh my gosh, I can feel that. Actually, and I have a question, I want to save it, but I have a question about that too because as with actors, even if they're a villain or a horrible presidential candidate, you have to believe in their motivation. So I want to talk to you about that.

But let's go get a little personal for a second because you mentioned in another interview with

Holly Starley

about kitchen themes and I just I was actually working out when I was listening to that interview and I was like, this is so great. Like, and it made me think about what like what theme what room in the house is my theme and of course, it was the bathroom.

But I want to know about the kitchen of your youth because this kitchen theme is important in this novel as kind of this middle class way to deal with life's anxieties. I want to know a little bit about your kitchen of your youth.

Eleanor

Well, it's funny, actually, I was thinking about the kitchen of my youth the other day because my nephew is now living in the house that I grew up in and my gender fluid child went there recently to stay the night. And when they came home, I said—it was a crazy question—I said, “Is the kitchen still the same?” And they went, “Well, I don't know. I’m only 17. I've never been, what are you talking about?” I was like, why did I ask that? Because it so mattered at me that the kitchen is just the same. And the kitchen in that I grew up in London—and if anyone's read my memoir, it's the big, whatever I called it, the “tall white house in London”—and the kitchen had a long butcher's block as a table. It's fully scarred. We used to have, worms used to squiggle out of the table while we were eating in the wood. And the end was like cut and I used to drive my knife into it. It was very, very long.

And fully kind of 1970s kitchen and with all our funny old paintings on the wall and all that kind of stuff. And I guess, you know, it was the place where we all came together. The house I grew up in was, in some ways it was utterly chaotic. There were always a lot of people staying there. My mum was very keen on taking in anyone really, whether she knew them or not. So there was always a lot of people staying, there was a lot of us, and the kitchen was always busy and full of people. But I know I had my place there because I was the only one—my place was at the end of the kitchen table—everyone else sat along and the table was up against the window, like long ways, so no one could sit at the other end. So for some reason, I always got at the end. And I used to build these, walls of cereal packets around myself. So I could watch what was going on and listen, but be completely protected and surrounded by these Weetabix and Cornflakes or Coco Puffs, whatever it was. And I think that's sort of my ideal. Like whenever I go to, I have to go to sleep listening to podcasts because what I love, I think I used to, or I'd be under the table listening. It's like being around lots of people, but having my little cocoon within that place. So I think there was a lot of observance. There were strangers and friends and family and people I couldn't stand and people I really loved are all in that kitchen. And I would sit at the end, I think. And I think there was a lot of observance going on.

And yeah, and for the first three books, I guess, I've written, they've all been, they've all sprung out of a kitchen. That's where they've all come from. I hadn't, until I talked to Holly, actually, I don't think I'd really noticed that. And then, you know, Fallout, although we're in the kitchen again, actually, Fallout begins in the kitchen, but we sort of leave. And then the book I'm writing now has very much left the kitchen.

Kimberly

Really? Awe, brilliant.

Eleanor

Yeah, yeah, I think it's taken me three novels to leave the kitchen, which is really interesting in terms of one's maturity in growing up and the processes we go through around healing relationships with our families and that kind of stuff. It's taken me that amount of time to make my peace with that kitchen, everybody in it, and be ready to leave home, I suppose. Here I am at 53 and I left home when I was 18, but psychologically, in my psyche, it's clearly taken me three novels of working stuff through and being in the kitchens of that heart of houses to leave.

I think, yeah, and I think the other bit of it is as well, actually, that I'm deeply influenced by various writers like Elizabeth Taylor and Penelope Mortimer and Penelope Fitzgerald, and who are really right—and in fact, Jane Austen writes kitchen dramas, if you want to look at it that way—do you know what I mean? It's very, and so I think I had to work all of that, all of those influences out of my system as well.

Kimberly

This makes a lot of sense to me and I do think in any artist's work you start to see sort of patterns and perhaps like you said there's this working out of your own youth and your own traumas and then when it's done it's done and it's not again it's not conscious it's just kind of like what else and you get to leave home and explore the world in a different way. Yeah.

Eleanor

Right, right. And I think it occurred to me today actually, I obviously I won't go into it, but there was recently something that happened in my family which required most of my siblings to get around the table and talk about something. And I noticed that it was the first time we'd really done, well, it was the most productive. And I never would have said that 10 years ago, but there's been a movement, you know, and for me that—I watched my behavior. It was interesting to watch one's behavior around one's siblings, like internal family systems or all that stuff. And I watched now, I sit back a little bit and I have different behavior around it. And that's as much a product of the literary work I've done and working that out as it is the personal work I do with my, I work with a somatic experiencing healer and obviously my insight from that and everything.

Kimberly

Somatic experiencing makes a lot of sense to me now that you mentioned that—I'm familiar with that and it because of the visceral quality of your work it makes so much sense to me that that's where a lot of your own healing has come from.

Eleanor

Yeah, I mean it's absolutely changed my world. It's just the most extraordinary. I was very lucky to find someone brilliant and I work with her.

Kimberly

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the trauma that we talked, you mentioned at the top of this, because I know Tessa, as you, and as you mentioned, anyone perhaps living with bipolar disorder has experienced some sort of trauma from their youth. And I'm so glad that you included this in your book. And this dismissal of her own experience and her own feelings as valid and true that way early on in her development.

So in your own life, have you also experienced this cycling of trauma? You're mentioning that now and I'm wondering if this is a theme also in your own life and what have you done to break that cycle, including some of the therapy you’ve mentioned.

Eleanor

Yeah, I mean, I'm a survivor and I only understood that to be the case about four years ago, probably, I think just before I started writing the memoir. But I had the experience of the black box opening in my head and a whole lot of stuff coming back that I had successfully shut away to cycle back to this survival mode. That was a very, very successful technique of my brain. happens to a lot of people. And yeah, I mean, obviously it's not an easy thing to talk about, as a result of that, the black box opening in my head, I got sober and I started working with a somatic experiencing practitioner.

And you see already I can't remember what your question was.

Kimberly

That's fine because— Oh hello, kitty. Hello, beautiful!

Eleanor

But yes, work, I know what I was going to say. So when I first started working with her, very first thing she said was that what we're dealing with is Complex PTSD. And she explained to me what that was. Because I've never really been able to understand, you know, like I'm an addict in recovery, but that doesn't, you know, I never fit the, you know, sort of the trope of an addict, you know what I mean? I was absolutely functional. I was doing my thing, but there's no doubt that every single piece of my behaviour screams out addict and now addict in recovery. I didn't really understand that. Sometimes I don't really talk about it very much, but if somebody says, you know, what were you addicted to? That's kind of the wrong question. not that any addict will know. That's kind of not, it's kind of irrelevant because it's what's underneath all of that, that is the thing. And it was survival mode. And I very successfully self-medicated for a very, very long time until I had the resources to stop self-medicating and start to dig in. And it was my somatic experiencing woman who said, “Yeah, this is Complex PTSD. And then I really started to study that and really get underneath it.

So yes, to go back to the novel, Tessa, in my armchair, I will say that she has Complex PTSD and because it was un-recognised and unheard and un-dealt with for a very long time, it then progressed into what she was then diagnosed as bipolar as a way of coping with this un-realised and un-coped with complex PTSD as a result of a trauma in her own childhood.

Kimberly

Complex PTSD is something that I learned about a few years ago during a podcast interview and this woman has chronic illness, but was a former physician and quit her practice to learn more about her own earlier traumas and she was not able to identify a moment that we—you know, prior to complex PTSD, we all thought, “Well, if you have PTSD, you have to have a moment where something happened.” And these little assaults are just as powerful as the one big assault. And often the little assaults like you're expressing here are the ones where our emotional truth is dismissed, so much so that we end up distrusting our own emotional truth.

Eleanor

Exactly. And that's the complex bit. The PTSD bit is, I've been caught in an explosion. But the complex bit is, my reality has been denied. That's what makes PTSD complex. Because it's suddenly, as you say, you're like, there's nowhere to turn. Nobody is recognizing your reality. You don't know what's, especially if you're very young as I was, you don't know what's real, what's not. You've got all these different things going on at once. And so everything just splinters. It just splits off into different boxes and you just, well, in my case, you just start running as soon as you possibly can and keep running until, and I didn't know if I was running towards or away from, you know, it's just, yeah.

Kimberly

Yeah, I did the opposite Eleanor. I imploded. I got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and just thought, well, I'm safe if I become what the world wants me to be. Because to the point where I'm like, I don't know what I am. I am as long as I'm what you want me to be. So similar, but very different reaction.

Eleanor

Right, a totally different response. Another, great solution to the problem. Yours, you came up with solution, I came up with the solution. Great for a certain amount of time until that moment comes. And I guess, I don't know if you'd agree with this, Kim, but certainly mine was an internal, unconscious understanding that I now had the resources and that was the shift. I don't know whether you understand your shifts like that or...

Kimberly

My shift was truly like a two by four over my head. It was more like I could have kept going. But my body broke down. So the two by four was my body going “Uh uh!” So the implosion wasn't as much conscious as much as it was physical. And then I had to sort of unravel from there.

So you have this great line in the book where you say, “There is no terror like the terror that your parents are lying.” And that type of betrayal is I think the original betrayal and then we repeat these betrayals in a thousand different ways in a thousand different relationships and you do this so beautifully in this book by introducing obviously Tessa's trauma, which is the original through her family of origin, but then through all the different characters that you develop in the story that are also betraying her in a million different ways, consciously and unconsciously.

So I want to circle back to some of these characters because they are lovable in their own way, but they are also vile.

And I want to know how do you find compassion for these characters that you write that are less lovable?

Eleanor

Well, I think the first thing is that I know it's absolutely crucial that I find the humanity in them. And I leave it up to the reader whether they want to feel compassion, empathy, sympathy, whatever they want to feel. But my job is absolutely to identify, to inhabit the humanity of them, just to remember that—specific characters that I'm thinking of and you're thinking of—they were once upon a time, they were a little baby. They were growing up. They didn't know. Just try and get back to that bit.

And then, okay, they grew into someone who, you know, yeah, I don't like them right now. Or that person is modeled on various people that I have not, I don't want in my life. I don't want to engage with that person. But it's not for me to make your mind up as the reader. I'm really a staunchly, a fighter for that in the role of the artist—to not lead the witness, not tell the reader by use of stereotypes and clunky, clumsy plot and language to make you feel a certain way about someone.

And what was really interesting, because it was serialized, it was really interesting in real time, seeing different people's responses to different characters. And to my great surprise, there were some people who really loved certain people who I really didn't and really didn't like people that I really did. And I just thought, I thought, okay, no, actually I'm doing my job. That's good. That's good because they really relate to that person and there is their humanity or maybe their act outs or maybe they're something they're relating and they're allowed to relate and that's okay. Do know what I mean?

So I was listening to

Samuél Lopez-Barrantes

talk about this in his book, The Requisitions, the other day, and he said exactly the same thing. And his book is about Nazi invasion of Poland and the ghetto, Łódź Ghetto. And he was asked the same question. How do you write characters that are just so appalling? And he said the same thing. "You've got to find the humanity in them and sit in there and just let them—those characters will be who they wanna be anyway. Like I don't have to make any effort to make them nice or not nice. They will be who they wanna be. My job is to sit in the humanity of them and let them dig their own grave. It's not my problem, it's not my job. They'll really do it, which they do.

And also importantly in this one, there's a specific character who is the kind of anti-hero to Tessa's hero. And I did have to struggle to let the reader who might be making assumptions about this person, to let them in and see their origin story and why they're like they are. And it was important, you know, it was really important to me that we do that and understand that even though the solution they came up with how to live their life is one that I find incredibly difficult and unbelievably destructive. But it's not really their fault that society doesn't treat them the same as the other person, is it?

Kimberly

That's a really good point. And it makes sense to me that you approach these characters, or the way that you approach writing in general, is that you just, you show us. There's no, even in your dialogue, there is so much happening in your dialogue, but it's not explained. It's shown; I love the pace of that, it is breathless actually for me. And sometimes I really have to slow my own pace down so that I'm catching everything, but you never ever explain, which I just love.

Eleanor

I believe my readers are really intelligent people. They'll figure it out. They'll get it. They are intelligent people. They will figure it out and get it. And somebody posted the other day on Substack, can't remember what their publication is called [Stunning Sentences] but they pick out beautiful sentences and they picked out one by Doris Lessing. But it was, if I can produce just enough for my reader's imagination to fill in the scene, then that's great. And we can get on with something else. Like I don't need to—I'm a reader, my imagination's great—I don't need much, let me run. So that's what I try and do, because actually there's so much of the story to tell and readers are clever.

And the imagination is the most beautiful—I don't know how to describe it—it's not a tool or resource, this invention that we have, which we call an imagination, is just absolutely phenomenal. And I just let it, I just need to put in the magic ingredients and then it just, bing, like that. That's my plan anyway.

Kimberly

That's such a lovely way of putting it. Even Eleanor, you even do it in your so you have the dialogue and that's happening. But then even in your narration or as you're just, you know, walking someone into a scene, it's like you're noticing, you know, the table and then the cat on the end of the table and then the lamp and it's just comma, comma, comma, comma. You're walking, walking, walking into the scene. And there is so much that my imagination does as you're paint, almost like a painter, you're painting or turning the lights on in the room and illuminating the whole space so that our own imaginations can then take what we need from that. It's just, it's, it's a thrilling style.

And I don't, you know, not everybody has that same style, but I have to say it's quite addictive. Now I'm like, I read other things and I'm like, “Hmm, they should tighten that up like Eleanor.”

Eleanor

Thank you.

I love you.

Kimberly

So speaking of all these characters and these scenes that you paint, you set this whole story in a small town which of course acts as a pressure cooker for rumors and judgments. I want to hear a little bit about your decision to paint this beautiful story in a small town and how that conveys larger themes around stigma and isolation.

Eleanor

Well, I think anybody who knows England knows that the home counties is an absolutely perfect place for deceit and selling the perfect and causing each other terrible distress. It's such a small, it's such a pressure cooker. And I chose Midhurst in West Sussex because I know it very well. I know that it's full of people with, there's a range of economic backgrounds there, but there's a vast majority of people who've moved to Midhurst who are comfortably off, they're checking out each other's houses, they're all wondering if they're all going to the Polo. There's a lot of social climbing and competitiveness and which interestingly, individual friends who live in Midhurst, everybody individually doesn't like it and is sick of it and doesn't want it. But there's a herd mentality as a clubbing together, which is again, it's a survival mechanism. If everyone's going to that dinner party, why aren't I? Or you've got that pony or your children are going to a particular school. So it's a kind of ready-made scene setting, stage set for me. It's like I don't really have to make anything up, you know. They do have an amateur dramatic study. It's not called the Midhurst, it's not called the Mads, it's called something else. But I had to do it. And in fact, a friend of mine came up with that. (Thank you, Felicity.) But yeah, I think I chose, I could have chosen anywhere in the Southeast. I know Midhurst really well. And because it's just a, it's a naturally the stage is set, I don't have to do anything, it's just so perfectly there. And also because, again, I won't give this away, but there's a particular geographic setting to the various roads that go in and out of Midhurst, which was required for the very ending of the novel.

Kimberly

Yes, absolutely. And it gives those societal expectations, it puts it under a microscope because of course we all live with societal expectations. But when it's a small town, we really feel those, not just from society, but from each other.

Eleanor

Right, and I think that's why as well it worked well because I needed somewhere that one of the characters would move into, Ros moves into that society and so we see the experience of arriving, wanting to join in, wanting to be part of, meeting people, the snobbery, the the clique-iness of it.

And also, let's not forget, it's a farming community as well. And there's a farmer in the book, Brian, who plays a small yet significant part in the novel. So there's a range of kind of backgrounds going on there. And the friend who inspired the novel lives somewhere very similar. And I witnessed how society would treat her in various different ways depending. And, you know, I just needed it.

Kimberly

Different, as in she was treated differently based on where she was living?

Eleanor

Yeah, it wouldn't have worked in London. The novel wouldn't have worked in London. I think she would have been treated a different way. But there in a small West Sussex market town, running down the street with your knickers on your head is not going to get compassion from anyone. Let’s be frank.

Kimberly

Exactly. In Portland, we can see all sorts of different behaviors and it's dismissed in another way, but there's also a lot more of it. And so we kind of just go, okay, that's someone having a day. And we sort of ignore it. But in your book, there is no ignoring. It becomes the center of the town, really. mean, they don't have anything else to talk about.

Eleanor

Right, and there's a code of conduct that is unhelpful when it comes to not being—I think there's a scene very early on when Tessa turns up to a barbecue, a late summer barbecue. She knows how she's supposed to behave and she knows what she's supposed to say. And she does those things, but we know because we've got her internal, it isn't at all how she wants to behave and not the thing she wants to say at all. She wants to disrupt the whole thing and turn over the table with the chablis on it, et cetera.

And I've been in that. I can't, keep it—I live a very isolated life actually. I'm not too far away from Midhurst. I'm quite sure the people of Midhurst will never speak to me again, but it doesn't matter because I live pretty isolated anyway and I keep myself to myself. And I have a couple of friends around here, but I really don't go out and I keep all my social down in the West country. And just to avoid all of that inner party nightmare.

Kimberly

Well and you have so many characters alive in you all the time. I would imagine you never want for company.

Eleanor

Right, I don't. Loneliness is not something I suffer from at all. Yeah, it's all going on all the time, good Lord. Yeah.

Kimberly

So we're nearing the end here and I have a couple more questions but I want to make sure we leave a little bit of time to just promote this wonderful book. I think one of the challenges with writing mental illness or what I've struggled with in creating content about chronic illness is that we can either romanticize or we can villainize and you know how to walk that line where there's the truth of the experience, but there's also the hope and the resilience. So how did you sort of balance those realities of mental illness with hope and resilience?

Eleanor

Yeah, that was a really important part to me that it would be so easy to write this novel with a kind of patsy ending of either, she wasn't on meds and then she went on meds or she started doing exercise or that kind of like. And the fact is anybody who lives with any kind of condition, which is debilitating to their everyday enjoyment of life knows that there is absolutely no one answer for anybody ever. So it's all very well to meet somebody with the same condition as you. But even then, onsolicited advice, as we all know, is really a bore because what works for me may not work for you. So I really didn't want to get into any kind of tropes around what Tessa needed to do and not do.

Firstly, about it being her fault or not fault or the background to it at all, not get into any stereotypes around bipolar, but around, but particularly as we near the end of the novel and she's sort of, she's sort of coming out for air and we almost get the most, we do kind of get the most sane, I'm using that word very carefully, near the end in terms of kind of quiet balance where she's able to take a breath and look around at where she really is and not be firefighting. That's what I mean, I think by the end, we get to Tessa in a place where she's not firefighting. For most of the novel, she's firefighting and then near the end, she's not. And it was really important that I leave her on a note, which is purely about management and her own decisions around management and listening to the people around her who ask her around management to do certain things for them to help her. But also that it wasn't like there's no happily ever after. The fact is Tessa lives with this condition and sometimes it's okay and sometimes it's not okay. And sometimes she does everything she's supposed to do and it still doesn't work.

Do you know what I mean? That’s life, that is literally what life's like. It's like healing is like that, you know.

Kimberly

Yeah, it's called unfixed for me.

Eleanor

It's called unfixed man and it's absolutely. So it was really important to me that we leave Tessa in a very real place, a really relatable place that neither shames anyone who's reading it, who has her experience and doesn't manage to have some sort of happy ending like she's got. I didn't want that. I didn't want somebody who lives with a similar condition to either be like, “Well, that's not how it is. I didn't want that,” and I didn't want to shame them by making Tessa some sort of example of a “if you do all of this, it's a happy ending,” because that's totally unfair and it's not life.

So it was really important to me that I just, I leave her in a place that's quite normal, not dramatic, it’s just like some days are good and some days are bad. I mean, I'm not going to completely ruin it because there's other things to the ending, but ultimately in terms of feeling and not dropping into stereotypes and avoiding all tropes around mental illness, it's absolutely an individual experience. How one goes into it will have been born of something individual. How one experiences it and the solutions we come up with when we're in the throes of it are entirely individual. And then how we move on, if we're lucky enough to some sort of no longer firefighting management section of our lives of healing is again, 100 % individual. It's just, right?

Kimberly

We call it the new normal in the chronic illness community. So you go through all the firefighting stages of What is this and Why am I, the grieving and then you get to a point where it's like, Okay, this is my new normal. It's not perfect. But it's gonna be, this is my new normal, which is all over the place. And there's a grace, I think, with that.

Eleanor

I think there's an enormous grace with it. And that's from my own experience. There's an enormous sense of not constantly striving for some impossible something, but just seeing the landscape just roll out in front of me, like, Okay, there's time and there's space and I'm doing my best.

And I don't have to tell anyone. I don't have to shout it from the rooftops. I don't have to suddenly present fixed. It's nobody's business. And actually my honest relationship with myself and this thing, and I know that you talked about this as well, you know, what it is giving me in terms of my own learning, which is another part of trauma and healing and the whole unfixed process of it—there are moments on my own where I think, okay, I hate to admit it, but this has given me certain things and I'm gonna look at those as well.

But I think I have that experience of no longer firefighting and seeing the landscape roll out in front of me and there's time and let's just all take a breath. And I think that's the place where I kind of, that was that very real place that I wanted to get to with Tessa. I didn't know if she was gonna get there by the way, when I was writing the book, because you never know with writing. Yeah, you never know.

Kimberly

Are you a painter? I just have to ask because the way you speak, have these visions just start spilling out of my head as you—”the landscape rolling out in front of me”—that's going to be with me forever because of you just saying that, but it's such a beautiful concrete way to imagine ourselves into the life that we are living. And it's kind and it's gentle. So are you a painter?

Eleanor

I'm not, no I'm not. If I wasn't a writer, I'd be a sculptor, I think. So yeah, no, never painted. I've tried everything else.

Kimberly

So my last question for you is just, you carry such wisdom and I think you entered into writing this story with an abundance of wisdom and the experience that you also had with your friend. But did anything change for you writing these characters and your perspective on mental health and how you live with it now, or your relationship even with your friend, did anything transform as you wrote this story?

Eleanor

I, I don't think so enormously actually, because I'd, I'd been 30 years with her through it. I think the only thing that changed actually, there was some which was because of my own experience with healing Complex PTSD trauma, surviving, was that element of management rather than fixed and done and an end point. I think that's the only thing really.

I wrote Tessa a long time ago, really before all of that kind of bloomed in my head. Although I did, I think, kind of really rewrite the ending when I streamed it. So I think I arrived at a much, much more compassionate place and a much deeper understanding of how vital arriving at some form of management within oneself around what we have to deal with, how important that was. So I did gain a deeper understanding, but I don't think it was through writing the book, was through working through my own trauma and then streaming the novel and editing it and then rewriting. The ending was always sort of that, but I pretty much rewrote it. And I think I rewrote it with a much, much—I know I did—a much deeper understanding of how to live with what Tessa had. I think that's it, of just how to live with it and the management of expectations. And the management of expectations of her friends as well.

So as the friend of my impossible friend, you know, I take a tough line with her in terms of management. I know there are places where she's capable of management. And then I absolutely know there aren't. And when we speak, I tend, because I know there aren't a lot of people in her life who just believe her, begin at a position of believing her. That's my position always. No matter where she is in her psychosis roundabout, I always go with believing. That's the very first thing. So it doesn't matter what she's telling me. Because you need at least one person in your life who believes you, whatever's coming out your mouth, right? It's just, it couldn't be more important.

Kimberly

You're unraveling her trauma by doing that.

Eleanor

Right, just little by little by little. And I just listen and listen and let her say it out. Because once you get it out, then it's not here. You know what I mean? There's a bit in the novel about parents lying to you and the inside matching the outside. And I think lying to our children—I made an absolute point, I never lie. I never lie to them. I'll let them be children. I won't load them with adult stresses, but I do not lie to them because it's lying which chips away at like, What is reality and who am I?

Kimberly

Absolutely. It's the incongruency. The incongruency, I don't know if it was Gabor Mate, but incongruency is one of the traumas that children experience where they like feel something and then they're told something else.

Eleanor

Right, and they're told it's not happening. Exactly. So for my impossible friend, little by little, I believe her as she tells me things. And I think if I could speak to Scott and Claire in the novel now, I don't know if any of the characters do say that to each other, but it is absolutely: just believe them, let them speak. You don't have to have a judgment. That's why it's called In Judgment of Others. You don't have to have a judgment over it. Put your judgment aside. This is not the place for judgment. And if you can't believe them, don't speak to them. Just say no. Do you know what I mean?

Kimberly

It’s huge Eleanor, it's huge. I have chills as you talk about it because I know the people that are listening and the people that will read this book will just be like, Thank you.

Eleanor

Yeah, I did get a very sweet, another friend who's been through a similar, I sent her a galley copy and she messaged me and she said, Thank you. And that really, I was just like, My God, okay, that means a lot, a huge amount.

Kimberly

I'm so excited for this to come out. I'm just thrilled and like I mentioned at the top, this is coming out January 28th which is only a few weeks away. And it's available globally in all good bookstores. You're doing a recording so it'll be on Audible, which will be lovely because your voice is incredible. And I wanna also say for fellow Substackers, I read this when it was serialized and then to prepare for this interview, I went back and reread the whole thing like within a couple days and boy, does it need to be binged. It needs this format. I mean, it was extraordinary as a serialized, but the characters really moved me to another level when I could just have them in my hands and when I could hear them in my head and live with them and dream with them. So I'm so glad that this is going to be available and I know also that you do Q &A's for book clubs. This should be on everybody's book list. Do you want to say anything about that?

Eleanor

Well, I love turning up to book groups. So if there are book clubs out there, book groups who want to pick it for their monthly read, and you'd like me to zoom in and do a Q & A after you've all read it, I'd be absolutely delighted. I really enjoy it. I think every reader matters. That's my mantra. And I just love connecting with readers because that's what it's all about. You complete the book. When I read someone else's book, I'm completing that book. Books, they need to be read.

And get to witness that full circle, it's just the best thing in the world. So yeah, please do. You can contact me through my website or DM me on my Substack or whatever. I'd be delighted.

Kimberly

Eleanor, thank you so much for this time. It makes me want to have all these ideas now sparking, but like maybe we should also hold a forum or something because when you speak about this book and then you speak about your own experience, there's so much wisdom there and passion too, it comes from within. And I feel some of that rage that started this book even. And so I think it's gonna be important to gather people together to talk about this book after they've read it. So anyway, we can talk about that.

Beautiful work.

Eleanor

Thanks, Kim. Thanks, my darling.

Kimberly

Thank you. You are so lovely. And it's an honor to share this time with you really, truly.

Eleanor

Yeah, well, ditto. I think you're amazing. Thank you.

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P.S. I have another exciting publishing announcement! Empress Editions has acquired the world rights to my memoir Unfixed: A Memoir of Family, Mystery, and the Currents that Carry You Home, to be released in bookstores everywhere on October 14, 2025.

Sometimes dreams do come true. What began eight years ago as a deep dive into my past and the narrative rhythms that shaped me has grown into something I never expected: a published memoir (, a sharing, and—most astonishingly—a community of readers-turned-friendships I cherish beyond words. Your support and encouragement gave me the courage to write, to share, and to believe in this story’s value. This is more than a memoir; it’s a beacon for anyone seeking answers, solace, or simply the courage to keep exploring life’s mysteries. I hope this memoir will stay with you long after the last page, offering a story as profound and untamed as the ocean itself.

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